


Three Mistakes to Change Your Ways

by ellacj



Series: 52 Weeks of Swan Queen [34]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Angst, Arranged Marriage, Dark Evil Queen | Regina Mills, F/F, Fluff and Angst, it's mostly angst lbr, part three of three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4671893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellacj/pseuds/ellacj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves."</p><p>-William Shakespeare</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Mistakes to Change Your Ways

Emma blinks her eyes open in the sunlight filtering through the window. A sweet smell wafts up to meet her nose; the scent of a delicious meal made by none other than Granny Lucas. She rolls over to face the body beside her. “Hey,” she murmurs, resting a hand on a cheek folding itself into a smile.

“Morning,” Charles says. “Mm, what smells so good?”

Emma laughs. “Granny’s making dinner for tonight. For the wedding.” She bites her lip and moves her eyes away from her husband’s. Today will be the first day she’s seen Regina in person in almost a year, and it’ll be for the other woman’s wedding. To Emma’s little brother.

It still seems so recent that the two of them were barely grown, giggling and kissing behind closed doors, and now here they are, each married to other people, in the blink of an eye. Despite what they might wish, time is a slow but constant force, always ticking on and bringing them ever closer to the next moment. And the next. And the next.

Charles’ hand strokes gently up her arm. “Are you going to be all right?”

Emma nods. “She’ll be here permanently. We can…” she trails off. Glancing up to meet Charles’ eyes, she gnaws on the inside of her cheek. “Do you think she’ll still want to be with me?”

“She’d be crazy not to.”

“Thanks.” Emma grins. She stands up and moves to her wardrobe, pulling a white cotton shirt over her head paired with her favorite riding pants. “I’m gonna head down to see Red and Bae. I’ll see you later?”

“Sounds good. You don’t mind if I use the mirror to speak to Nadia, do you?”

Emma shakes her head. “You can keep it. It’s not like I’ll need it anymore.”

Charles’ smile holds no trace of resentment, only joy for the woman who’s become a close friend over the years. They’ve had an understanding since the beginning. Their marriage is solely for their parents’ politics, and their love is truly the most important thing. Still, Emma must admit, it’s nice to have a friend in Charles. “Good luck today.”

“Thanks.” Emma glances at the floor before returning her gaze to her husband. “I’ll be back for lunch.”

“Tell Bae and Red I say hello.”

Emma waves over her shoulder as she throws a soft blue jacket on over her shirt and walks down the spiral staircase toward the stables. There’s an extra bounce in her step today, and she smiles at every servant who crosses her path, bares her innermost happiness because today is the day that Regina finally comes home. Today they can start being happy again.

“Hey, Swan,” Bae calls to her as Emma nears the bottom of the hill. “You look happy.”

“I am. Regina’s coming today.”

Bae nods once. “And you’re gonna be okay? Watching her marry Leo?”

Emma sighs. “I’m trying not to think about that.” She picks up a brush and walks over to Beetle’s stall, Bae on her tail. “Is Red down here?”

“Nah. She’s stuck in the kitchen all day. She and Granny are cooking-”

“For tonight. Yeah, I thought so.”

Soon after Emma’s wedding, Red and Bae finally came forward with their romance. Red spends a lot of time at the stables with Bae since then. Everyone in the palace agrees the whole thing was a long time coming. Even still, Red has to keep up with her duties in the kitchen, much to Emma’s disappointment. She was hoping to see her friend before Regina’s carriage arrived at lunchtime.

“You’re sure you’re gonna be all right?”

“I don’t know, Bae. But what I do know is that I don’t have a right to be anything but. I’m married, too, remember?”

Bae nods silently. “Yeah. I remember.” He grabs his own brush from the belt around his waist and moves to groom the side of Beetle opposite Emma. “How’s Leo doing with all this?”

Emma shrugs. “Mostly he feels bad for me. And then I feel like shit, because my little brother is getting married and becoming king and I’m still making it about me. I mean, how selfish can I be?”

“It’s not selfish to fall in love,” Bae says softly.

“It is when you’re a princess.” Emma falls quiet, and for a moment the only sound is the brushes moving through Beetle’s coarse hair. “Being a princess is all about looking the way you should look. We have no right to fall in love.”

“That’s a shame. You love better than anyone I know.”

“Yeah.” Emma finishes with a final sweep of her brush before tossing it in the pail just outside the stall. “I’m not gonna let it go to waste, though. I’m gonna love her exactly how she deserves to be loved.”

“And how’s that?”

“Completely.”

 

Emma watches from her bedroom window as the Mills carriage pulls to a halt inside the palace gates, stomach churning with excitement. She doesn’t race down the stairs like she wants to, though. She’s quite sure that if she greeted Regina at the door she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from kissing her. Instead, she watches as Charles and Leo politely escort her inside, Charles murmuring Emma’s message in her ear.

Regina smiles. And, oh, it’s that radiant smile Emma’s missed so much, the one that lights up Regina’s entire face and makes it look as though her chocolate eyes are lit on fire from the inside. The few minutes between the trio vanishing inside and the knock on Emma’s bedroom door are agonizing, but when those three sharp knocks resonate through the room, she almost squeals.

Their lips crash together with a burning passion that’s been building nearly a year, a fire crackling beneath her lips and teeth and tongues exploring each other anew, leaving marks on skin that yearned for the other’s touch for far too long.

“Hi,” Regina gasps against Emma’s lips.

Emma falls into a fit of giggles at that. “Hey,” she says once she recovers. “How was the trip over here?”

“Long. I don’t know, maybe it seemed longer because I couldn’t wait to get here.”

“Yeah?” Emma grins. “I spent the morning with Bae. Even he couldn’t distract me enough. Three hours felt like three days.”

“God, I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

They kiss again, softer this time, until Emma pulls away. “You’re getting married today.”

“Yes.”

“To my little brother.”

“Yes.” Regina sighs heavily. “How are we going to do this? We’re both married, and I’ll be the queen. If someone catches us…”

“They won’t. We’ve kept it secret for years, now.”

“It’s different now. We live together.

“We’ll be fine,” Emma says. “I’m not gonna let anything come between us. And that’s a promise.”

 

They both survive the wedding, but the marriage is a different story. Leo’s too young to know the first thing about running a kingdom, leaving it to Regina, and, by proxy, her mother. Under Cora’s indirect rule the kingdom falls into a tyranny, and Regina herself grows darker every day.

Two years into her rule she’s barely recognizable.

Emma started being wary of Regina the day she accidentally saw Cora teaching her dark magic, but she finds herself absolutely terrified when Regina rips out the heart of an innocent before her very eyes. Still, she can’t help but love her. And maybe that’s the scariest part.

Sitting down at dinner with Charles, Leo, Regina, and Cora, Emma’s gut clenches as she notices the manner in which Regina carries herself. It’s nothing like the girl Emma fell in love with under the stars all those years ago. It’s not the girl who smiled in the glass of a magic mirror or even the woman who agreed to marry a boy king in the name of peace.

This Regina is entirely Cora’s design. She strides into rooms with a confident step and a high, arched neck, nothing short of a malevolent goddess in the wake of her bumbling husband, still virtually a child, who stumbles over his words and his feet. This Regina doesn’t hesitate to rip away lives of men, where the girl Emma knew and loved would argue vehemently against squashing a bug under the toe of one’s boot.

They whisper about her, call her the Evil Queen, and Regina wears the title like a badge, pins it to the front of her dress and lets all those in her wake cower as she passes them in the corridor.

She still goes to the stables, though.

Emma sees her almost every morning, in the early hours before anyone is awake, running down the hill and racing toward the woods on the back of her beautiful steed. Without the dramatic makeup she’s suddenly so fond of and dressed in a simple tunic and pants, she looks almost innocent. Almost familiar. Like the girl Emma knows is still buried deep inside the dark heart of the Evil Queen.

Emma’s there with Bae one day when Regina returns from a particularly long ride, and she ducks into an empty stall and crouches down to avoid Regina’s sightline. She doesn’t need a confrontation today. She peers up and watches everything from her vantage point on the ground, praying that Regina doesn’t see her.

“Good ride?” Bae asks as Regina hands him her saddle and leads Rocinante back to his stall.

“It was.” Regina puts Rocinante away with an affectionate stroke of his shoulder before turning to Bae. “I trust you’ll take care of him?”

“’Course.”

She makes to go back to the palace, but Bae catches her wrist to stop her. “Get your hand off of me,” Regina spits.

Bae lets go. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“What happened to you? I mean, the version of you that sat with us and stared at the moon and who Emma wouldn’t shut up about?”

Regina stiffens. “I grew up. I learned what I had to do to get by. To survive.”

“Emma and I haven’t killed anyone, and we’ve both survived just fine.”

“Yes, and you didn’t grow up with my mother. It’s kill or be killed with her.” She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“Maybe not, but I thought you were pretty cool back then. And Emma loved you like crazy.”

“Doesn’t she still?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I think she’s still holding out hope that the old you is still in there.” Bae shrugs and folds his arms over his chest. “I’d like to think she is.”

Regina’s lips slowly curl into a smile, but it’s not the same smile Emma remembers, the one full of joy and light. This smile is entirely different, the corners of plump lips fashioning themselves into sharp swords with wicked curves, her eyes flickering not with happiness, but with malice. “That’s the difference between you and me, isn’t it?” she says in a voice much too smooth, too soft to be anything but evil. “I gave up on myself long ago.”

Regina starts walking toward the palace, but she turns around just enough for Emma to catch the flickering hint of sorrow in her eyes. “You should, too.”

“Do you still love Emma?” Bae calls after her.

Regina stops completely in her tracks, turning back and moving to stand in front of him. She crosses her arms. “Evil Queens don’t have the right to fall in love.”

“That wasn’t a no.”

“No,” Regina murmurs, voice barely audible. “It wasn’t a no.” And then she’s gone, walking briskly up the hill as Emma stands up from her place on the ground.

“Well,” Bae says. “There you go.”

Emma nods. “You think she’ll ever stop being evil?”

“I don’t know.” Bae reaches an arm around Emma’s shoulders and pulls her close. “You know what my dad said to me once? Before he ran off?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘the moment we hold the future in our grasp, its perfection fades into dim reality’.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bae shrugs. “It means the future is untouched by our past mistakes. It can be anything you want it to be. But the second you touch it you can’t change it anymore. The second you hold it in your hands it’s real.”

Emma nods slowly. She stares at the path Regina took to the castle, eyes never leaving the great stone walls, wondering endlessly if Regina’s heart is even still able to love. “I’ve still got hope. I’m not giving up on her.”

“Good. Go talk to her, then.”

“I think I will.” And, after giving Bae a tight hug, Emma takes her first step toward a future solidifying upon her shoulders with every breath.

**Author's Note:**

> this didn't turn out AT ALL like i planned, but hey, the muse does what it wants i guess


End file.
